Quotes about Sacrifice

This stunning act of humble love resulted not from Jesus's forgetting who he was but from remembering who he was. This was the holy mission of the Son Savior. He had to be willing to enter the lowest human condition, to do the most debased thing, and to let go of his rights of position in order that we might be redeemed. It was a high and holy calling, and it was the only way.

First, the gospel is the world's best love story. It is a story of a God of love who places his love on people who do not deserve his love. This God sends the Son of his love to make a sacrifice of love so that his children can be welcomed into his arms of love and become a community of love that takes his love to those in desperate need of that love.

But if it is life alone that dies, love is born, which is the innermost part of the spirit. It is the most mature and most precious fruit of the life that sacrifices itself. Love breaks out of the prison of individualism and nationalist stupidity. Love goes to another person, even one with a different language or of a different race, and returns from him richer.

If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it." — LUKE 9:23-24

in this case, the blood of the Passover Lamb — means the difference between life and death. To ignore the requirements whereby the sign would be present is to invite death and destruction into your home and family — and your nation. So, to some degree, the choice to live or to die is left to us.

To walk in a deep and consistent level of the anointing requires a price of personal sacrifice—spending more time with God than with people, fasting, and separating yourself in prayer and study of the Word. The anointing activates the presence of God, mixing it with a person's faith, and brings deliverance to the body, mind, and spirit.

What if the call to pray is a call to bleed as well as to receive blessing?

There is no higher "law" to be obeyed than the law of love. That, at the end of the day, is what it means to follow Jesus.

Lord, help me let go of control. Help me die. Help me trust.

Following Jesus isn't like a burden we carry on our shoulders. It's an internal process so radical and painful that the best way to describe it for people of that day is as the act of being bound and nailed like a criminal to a piece of wood lifted above the ground where you are left hanging in naked humiliation and intense pain until you suffocate.

We have to die, and the choice is ours. If we don't, we are still holding on to something. And if we are holding on, we aren't really following. Just sort of following. Standing around. [Oh God, what did I sign up for? This Christianity thing is hard. Deep breath . . .] The apostle Paul chimes in, too: I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. (Galatians 2:19—20)

Being "saved" by God is an ongoing process of growth and transformation, of dying and rising, of being "conformed to the image of his [God's] Son," as Paul puts it (Romans 8:29). Following Jesus means experiencing the taste of resurrection and ascension now—whether doing laundry, paying bills, or leading nations.